St Margarets Hope flying sites
Note: This map only shows the position of St Margaret's Hope within the UK.
ST MARGARET’S HOPE: Seaplane Alighting Area
Location: In Scapa Flow just N of St Margaret’s Hope on South Ronaldsway
NOTES: Shown on the Admiralty chart 2581 in the 1930s.
ST MARGARET’S HOPE: Temporary landing site
NOTES: In his mostly excellent book Air Ambulance Iain Hutchinson describes how Eric Starling, the Chief Pilot for Aberdeen Airways, (later renamed Allied Airways), set off from THURSO on the 2nd February 1936 to uplift a patient at St Margaret’s Hope needing to be taken to the Balfour hospital in Kirkwall. This flight being in the DH Dragon G-ADFI.
As a good reminder of how fraught with difficulties many of those early Air Ambulance flights were, Mr Hutchinson adds these memories from Captain Starling. “Special ambulance run to take elderly man to Kirkwall hospital. Owing to strong wind I took Mr. Williams and Alf Cormack with me to give a hand on the ground,” to act as ‘wing-walkers' without much doubt. Those early pilots often flew in atrocious conditions, but saw it as being part and parcel of the job. Today I suppose, we can only marvel at their bravery, skill and fortitude? It now seems likely that Captain Starling landed at BERRIEDALE? See below.
ST MARGARET’S HOPE: Landing Ground, later Civil regional airport (Aka BERRIEDALE)
A MICHAEL T HOLDER GALLERY
See NOTES below
British airline user:
1930s: Highland Airways and Aberdeen Airways
During WW2: Allied Airways
Location: Just E of St Magaret's Hope
Period of operation: 1933 to 1945?
NOTES: Mike Holder, who is a great friend of this :Guide', tells us: "On 24 June 1933 Ted Fresson picked up a passenger to fly fown to Inverness for the princely sum of £3.0s.0d. Ted chose a field to the east of St Margaret's Hope at Berriedale, owned by a local farmer - Robert Wood - which had a school at the eastern end of it." (My note: This would most probably have been after 'Ted' E E Fresson had branched out on his own to form Highland Airways.)
"This field was used intermittently by Freeson until the last time on 13 January 1937 when he took local photographers to photograph the wreck of the Finnish steamer - Johanna Thorden - in his DH84 Dragon G-ACIT." (See picture and article above)
"Gander Dower's Aberdeen Airways made use of the airfield starting on 21 December 1935 and put it in as a "stop by request" on their Orkney Schedule up to 1939. In the summer of 1939 Allied's DH84 Dragon (G-ACLE) hit a wall on take-off and was severely damaged. It was rebuilt at DYCE but was transferred to the RAF where it met its end - rammed by a tanker!"
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